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July 2007

July 27, 2007

Hank Azaria seems like a rather odd choice for the roll of David Sarnoff in the pending Broadway production of Aaron Sorkin's The Farnsworth Invention

Hank Azaria will play David Sarnoff, the head of RCA, and Jimmi Simpson (“The Rainmaker”) will portray the inventor Philo T. Farnsworth. Des McAnuff will direct the production, opening on Broadway at the Music Box Theater on Nov. 14, with previews beginning on Oct. 15.

Maybe this will give the tall, lean Azaria a chance to go on an all beef and cigars diet in order to fill out the roll of the short, stumpy Sarnoff.

Jimmy Simpson did a great job with the role of Farnsworth in San Diego, it's good to so him getting the part on Broadway.

And gee, whaddya know, November 14... the play opens the day before my birthday... let's have a party. Aaron?

July 19, 2007

Sorkin's much-touted NBC series, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," whose last episode aired just a few weeks ago, was canceled before the end of its first season, a victim of bad ratings and mediocre reviews. But it was also ambushed by nonstop sniping between Sorkin and the media, much of it even before the first episode aired.

The storm seems to have passed. Though not exactly eager to unburden himself, Sorkin sat down for the first time since "Studio 60's" cancellation to discuss the perils of failing in public and navigating a media universe where it's increasingly hard to tell if you are being judged by your work or simply by your celebrity persona.

Nothing in this particular item about a Spielberg/Dreamworks interest in The Farnsworth Invention, but it does call for three screenplays, and near as we know the film rights for that one are still up in the air...

Aaron Sorkin has signed a three-picture deal with DreamWorks and is already set to pen The Trial of the Chicago 7, which may be directed by DreamWorks principal Steven Spielberg. The movie tells the story of the trials of protesters at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, a seminal moment in 1960s counterculture where police reacted violently to anti-Vietnam War demonstrators. The other two projects in the deal have not been revealed.

It would certainly be ironic if Dreamworks wound up producing Aaron's The Farnsworth Invention. I have some personal history with Jeffrey Katzenberg -- the "K" in Dreamworks SKG. We were bunkmates at Camp Kennebec in 1962, but he passed on the Farnsworth story back in the 80s when he was still with Disney. I'll have to visit the archives and see if I can find that letter in the rejection pile...

July 12, 2007

They say Spielberg is co-financing the Broadway production of a play by Aaron Sorkin called “The Farnsworth Invention”, and he’s not doing it because he loves the stage. Instead, he may be doing it to get his foot in the door to produce and direct a movie version of the play. No, it’s not another musical about husband killing dames or mysterious opera psychos. Don’t panic.

The play is about a boy genius named Philo T. Farnsworth. He’s a genius, because in high school he invented the first ever completely electric television.

The Farnsworth Invention tells the story of how he did it, and was subsequently ripped off by RCA’s David Sarnoff over the patent. Hollywood Elsewhere immediately compares it to Francis Ford Coppola’s Tucker, and from the description that sounds like the sort of movie Spielberg could be going for if indeed this ever happens.

July 09, 2007

The motive behind Steven Spielberg's co-financing and co-producing the forthcoming Broadway presentation of Aaron Sorkin's The Farnsworth Invention, about a boy genius named Philo T. Farnsworth who invented television in high school in 1927 only to be ripped off by RCA's David Sarnoff over the patent, seems obvious. Spielberg is looking to produce and perhaps direct a film version. The golly-gee-gosh American-ness of that name -- Philo T. Farnsworth sounds like the cousin of Clem Kadiddlehopper -- and the theme of an innocent genius being hoodwinked by big-city tycoons is right up Spielberg's alley. The question is how different will the movie be (if it gets made) from Francis Coppola's Tucker?

I guess it's gratifying to finally see one of the biggest names in Hollywood express interest in a story that's been floating around for 30+ years now. But I always thought the name sounded more like "Gyro T. Gearloose" than "Clem Kadiddlehopper."

July 05, 2007

The Santa Monica Mirror takes note of The Archive of American Television -- now available online and viewable via Google Video -- which includes interviews with Pem Farnsworth:

There is an interview with Elma Farnsworth, the widow of Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of the electronic television. This is a woman who worked alongside Farnsworth as he developed what would become the way images were broadcast on television sets. To have this interview with Ms. Farnsworth available for viewing free of charge is astonishing. Maybe it’s not astonishing to young people who have grown up in the YouTube era, but take it from me, it’s astonishing to have access to this kind of information from one’s living room.

I guess "YouTube" is the right name for that site, but I sometimes I wish I thought of that first and called it "Farnovision." Cuz, yeah, he made THAT possible, too.

The life of any business manager would be so much more pleasant if one
of the classic American myths—that of the lone inventor—were true. But recent research shows that Thomas A. Edison didn’t do much by himself; Philo T. Farnsworth can only be credited as one of the inventors of television; and not even the Wright brothers deserve all the credit for the airplane.

As I've tried to say hundred -- maybe a thousand -- times, calling Farnsworth just "one of the inventors" of television completely misses the point.

Prior to Sept 27, 1927, the inventors of the day attempted to transmit moving images by means of electro-mechanical contrivances -- video jalopies -- that used spinning wheels and vibrating mirrors to deconstruct an image into its component parts of light and dark. Their work reflected the state of the art of the day -- 19th century solutions to a 20th century problem. What was needed as a complete breakthrough.

Philo Farnsworth demonstrated that breakthrough when he conducted his first successful experiment with the Image Dissector (camera) and Oscillite (receiver) tubes in his San Francisco laboratory on 9/7/27. Farnsworth achieved the desired by means entirely electrical, by manipulating light and electrons in a way that nobody had done before that date, and in so doing paved the way for all the other inventors and engineers who made contributions after that date.

Farnsworth's contribution was seminal, a point of demarcation that separated all that went before from all that followed. It was, as I've said before, "a breakthrough of epic proportions." And while it can be argued that achieving that breakthrough required the kind team work that Farnsworth himself cultivated in his own laboratory, the conception was entirely the product of his own fertile imagination.

To dismiss the role of the "lone inventor," as this article attempts to do, is to entirely ignore one of the fundamental characteristics of genius that has propelled technology and civilization.